1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to software and rich media monitoring, tracking, and return on investment (ROI) analysis.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is known in the prior art to provide methods and systems for centrally coordinating, collecting and storing error, trace, audit and other information in a computer network. A representative example is U.S. Pat. No. 6,470,388. In this patent, selected applications or processes running at various entities or hosts within the network instantiate one or more “debug” objects that collect given information. Each entity also includes at least one logging service layer that communicates with the application or process, and includes a communications resource and one or more state machine engines. In response to collecting error, trace, audit or other information, each debug object passes that data to the respective logging service layer, which decides whether to forward the data to a centralized logging facility disposed within the network. The forwarding of collected information depends on the state of the debug object. At the centralized logging facility, the information is time-stamped and appended to a log file along with the application's name and the name of the entity or host at which the application is running.
Another representative patent is U.S. Pat. No. 6,591,228. In this patent, a logging service logs to a centralized log diagnostic messages from applications executing in a computing environment in which a plurality of computers are coupled to data storage area. Each computer has one or more subsystems that execute applications. A logging service API writes diagnostic messages to the data storage and, depending on the type of problem, contacts an alert facility.